“What? Now? No Dax, you’re just inviting trouble.”
“Did I just invite Terrance in here with a gun? I need to know what the hell is going on. Obviously staying out of it isn’t doing us any good.”
“It’s because we’re still here, living in the midst of it, Dax. We need to just get the hell out of here.”
“Olivia, I can’t get out of here and move on with my life until I find out what or who has been holding me back the past two years.”
“I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep worrying about you all the time, Dax. If you go out that door tonight and do this, I won’t be here when you get back.”
I stopped and looked at her as I stepped into my jeans. She had been back in my bed for no longer than ten minutes and now she was giving me ultimatums. She wasn’t the one who just did two years hard time for some bullshit she didn’t do.
“I have to go, Liv. I’d like you to be here when I get back, but I guess you have to do what you need to do to.”
I slipped on my boots and grabbed my jacket off the hook on the wall. She had tears in her eyes, but I couldn’t let that stop me. This shit had to stop.
I checked out the bar and the offices before I left. Terrance was right about one thing. Olivia and I were the only ones there. I locked up before getting on my bike and riding over to see the Vice President at his home.
I knew he heard me ride up and I didn’t doubt that he was in there armed, but he wouldn’t shoot me, at least not on his own property. My dad may not have given two shits about me, but I’m sure he’d be pissed if his one Vice President shot his son. I walked up and banged on the door. He pulled it open and a big smile crossed his face.
“Hey Dax!” he shouted.
He was dressed in his jeans still and a sloppy looking t-shirt. He had a beer in his hand and I could see the remnants of what was probably his dinner. A Hungry Man container on the coffee table in the den.
“Hey, can we talk for few?”
“Sure, come on in,” he said. He led me into the den and muted Duck Dynasty on the TV. “Have a seat, Dax. What’s going on?”
I sat down and he did too, “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Sure, if I can. What do you want to know?”
“Why did you send Terrance over to the bar with a gun tonight for one?”
“What? I didn’t send Terrance anywhere tonight. I haven’t talked to him since yesterday.” He looked and sounded genuinely confused. I was finding out though that if the MC club didn’t work out, most of those guys could get acting jobs.
“He says he got a text from you saying there was a Cartel guy at the bar causing trouble. He came busting in on me and Olivia with a gun. I don’t care for having a gun shoved in my face and I’d like to know what the fuck is going on.”
He got up and went across the room. He picked his phone up off one of the end tables and looked at it. He handed it to me and said, “Look, Dax. No message.”
I looked through his text messages, the sent ones, the received ones and the trash. He didn’t have many of them and his most recent to Terrance was yesterday and said something about bringing him a torque wrench when he came over.
I handed it back to him. It would have been easy enough to delete it before I got there.
“See?”
“I don’t see a message, but that doesn’t mean it was never there.”
“Shit, Dax. I’m an old man. I barely learned how to text. I don’t know anything about electronics and I don’t know how to delete this shit. Look at them. I have over two hundred messages from each contact. The last time anything got deleted on this phone was around the New Year. I asked Terrance to do it for me because I couldn’t figure out how.”
“Is the club mixed up with the Mexican Cartel?”
“That’s a question you’ll have to ask your old man, Dax,” he told me.
I wasn’t getting the answers I needed so I left without as much as a goodbye.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
OLIVIA
I got up and dressed after Dax left. Once again, I threw my stuff into my old duffel bag without even knowing where I would go. Most of my clothes were still in it. I hadn’t planned on staying there permanently so I hadn’t unpacked. I guess that made it easy, albeit pathetic. I had to stop depending on other people. I needed to get a real job and get my own place so this crap would stop happening to me.
As I left, I looked at the mess the room was in. The door was hanging all cock-eyed off of its top hinge and the deadbolt had splintered the wood around it as it was forced opened by Terrance’s size twelve foot. A huge chunk was torn out of the doorframe where the lock had engaged and Terrance’s blood from where Dax had beaten him in the face was still on the floor. This place was a hole and I had to stop allowing myself to get caught up in it.
Once again, for the second time in two weeks I took my paltry belongings and got into my car. I took out my phone and sent my Uncle a text.
“Are you still up?”
“Yep.” was his reply.
“Can I come by?”
“Yep.”
I had to smile. He was such a nice guy, but definitely a man of few words.
“Okay, I’ll be there in a bit.”
I drove slowly on my way over. I was trying to clear my head and imagine what it would be like to have a normal life. I’d never really had that. My dad was always a little strange and my mother a little too dependent on him. It took me until I was twenty years old to find out his weirdness was coming from a pipe and it was what he was supplying that my mom was most likely dependent on. I didn’t have any evidence to back it up, but it was the only explanation I could come up with.
My uncle was waiting up for me and he’d even made me a cup of hot chocolate. The relationship I had with him was the closest thing to a normal family relationship that I’d ever had.
“Thanks for letting me come over,” I told him.
“Anytime, Liv. What’s going on? I can tell by your voice that you’re a little stressed out.”
“I was staying in the room behind the bar after I left Terrance, but it’s not working out. I need to distance myself from that place. It’s nothing but bad news.”
“Did something happen?”
“Too much has happened. Dax came home and once again he told me he didn’t do what he was accused of. I don’t know if it’s naïve of me or not, but I believe him. But because I believe him it leaves me feeling guilty as hell about not standing by him and being with Terrance.”
“Is that why you and Terrance broke up?”
“No, Dax is trying so hard to prove his innocence. He found some emails that made it look like Terrance was the one who set him up. I confronted him and he denied it, he lied right to my face. Dax confronted him and he admitted setting him up, but he said it was because Bull ordered him to do it.”
“Jeez, that’s harsh.”
“Yeah, if it’s true. Dax confronted Bull and he denies everything. I’m just so tired of it all. I want to be with Dax. I still love him. He can’t get past this whole revenge thing though and I just can’t live like this anymore. He’s going to get in trouble again just by virtue of being involved with these guys. He doesn’t seem to understand that.”
“So what happened tonight?” he asked me.
“Terrance bust in on me and Dax in the room I was staying in and put a gun in my face.”
My uncle jumped up and said, “What? That little bastard!”
“It’s okay. Dax beat the crap out of him for it. He said that his dad sent him there with the gun because there was supposedly a Cartel member in the bar. I believed him, mostly because he looked scared to death when he realized it was Dax he’d actually pulled a gun on.”
“You’re right. You have to get the hell out of there. You can stay here in your old room.”
“Thank you,” I told him. “God, I hate to keep asking for things. I’m going to get my shit together soon, I promise.”
“You nee
d a job too?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ve been looking…”
He waved his hand at me like I was being silly and said, “Your old job is still yours if you want it.”
“But you already hired new people.”
“That’s okay. Maybe I can take a day or two off now,” he said with a grin. I stood up and hugged him.
“Thank you. One of these days, I’m going to pay you back.”
“You’re family. You don’t charge family,” he said.
---
The next few days were so blessedly normal that I almost didn’t know what to do with myself. I got up early the first morning and made breakfast for me and my uncle. After we had finished eating he went in to open the shop and I got in the shower. I heard the text alert from my phone as I stepped into the shower. I assumed it would be Dax, so for the time being I ignored it.
I enjoyed my long, hot shower. I took my time drying and straightening my hair and putting on my make-up. I heard the text alert two more times and I still didn’t check it. I wanted the peace of mind that comes with the unknown for another few minutes at least.
After dressing in a pair of dark blue jeans and a pink and gray racing t-shirt I picked up the phone. I looked at it and saw that all three messages were, as I had thought they would be, from Dax. I should have just deleted them, but I was a glutton for punishment so I pushed read.
“Olivia, I’m sorry. Please call me, we need to talk.”
“Olivia, come on, don’t be ridiculous. Call me.”
He’s no longer sorry, and now I’m being ridiculous.
“I miss you. Please call me. We’ll go for a ride on the bike and talk. I’ll buy you lunch. Please.”
I pressed, “Delete Thread” and then “Okay,” and then I went to work.
The shop was busy and it was good to lose my thoughts in dull, drab things like two-cycle oil and handle grips. My first customer of the day was one of those forty year old businessmen who was losing his hair and his grip on his mid-section. In order to compensate for that, in his mind at least, he’d bought a Harley. Not just any Harley, mind you. He had bought one of my uncle’s customized Harley’s and he had paid upwards of eighty grand for it. He was back now and looking for riding clothes.
“Hi Mr. Neill.”
“Well hello, Olivia. It’s good to see you back.”
“Thanks, it’s good to see you too. Is there something I can help you with?”
“I just need some t-shirts and accessories so when I ride the bike your uncle built for me I look like I belong on it. What do you think?”
I think you’re going to need a time machine that can take you back at least fifteen years before you look good on it. “Oh yeah, we have lots of Harley gear,” I said instead. “Follow me over here and I’ll show you.”
He followed me over to where the clothes were and by the time he left the store I’d talked him into about three hundred dollars in merchandise. My uncle was a happy man.
The rest of the day was about the same and when I got back to the house that night I actually made dinner. I cooked pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy and vegetables. When my uncle came home we had dinner together. We talked and laughed, mostly at Mr. Neill’s expense and then I spent the rest of the evening mindlessly watching television in my room.
I waited until just before I went to sleep to check my text messages. There were six of them, all from Dax and today he’d actually left a voicemail. I didn’t bother reading or listening to them. I was finished this time. I had to take my life back and refusing to do it Dax’s way was the second step…leaving Terrance had been the first.
The next morning was as nice as the first, right up until the moment that Dax walked in the door. My uncle had gone to the post office and the bank so I was the only one in the front of the store. Thankfully, I didn’t have any customers at the moment.
“What are you doing here, Dax?”
“Looking for you. You won’t return my calls or texts. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine. My uncle gave me a place to stay and my job back. You can leave now and go back on your quest for the truth.”
“I don’t know why you’re so sarcastic about that, Liv. If you did time and you were innocent, wouldn’t you want to know who set you up?”
“I’m sure I would,” I told him, honestly. “But I wouldn’t risk my freedom again to do it.”
“I’m not going back to jail, Liv. I’m being careful.”
“Terrance burst in the room and pointed a gun at us, looking for a Mexican Cartel member. This is how these people live and you say you hate it, yet you seem to be inexplicably drawn to it nonetheless.”
“Just until I figure all of this out,” he repeated for the thousandth time.
“Then figure it out without me,” I told him.
“Olivia, I just got you back.”
He took a step towards me and I took one back. I couldn’t let him touch me. His touch was like voodoo and I’d get sucked right back in.
“You have a choice here, Dax. I want to be with you too, but I can’t risk my heart again. I can’t keep living like this. I’m making positive changes and if you’re ready to do that too…I’d love for us to do that together. I’d love to know that you chose me over revenge.”
“I can’t walk away until I clear my own name,” he said. “This shouldn’t be an either or choice. I’ll take care of you Olivia. I won’t let anyone hurt you and I’m not going to let them hurt me again either.”
“You’re not Superman, Dax. You can’t control their behaviors either. Once again, I had a gun in my face two days ago. I choose not to live like that. I need you to choose not to live like that too.”
“I do, Olivia. I don’t want that life. I just have to go along with it for a little while longer.”
“Then I can’t be with you right now, Dax.”
He stood and looked at me with his piercing green eyes for the longest time. I was so tempted to take a step forward and press my lips to his. I was proud of myself for my resolve though. I stuck to my guns even as I watched him turn around and walk out of the store. I wondered if he was walking out of my life too.
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